


Need

by Sally M (sallymn)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Angst, Gen, Series 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-09
Updated: 2009-12-09
Packaged: 2017-10-04 07:11:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sallymn/pseuds/Sally%20M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nightfall over Terminal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Need

**Need**

****

_I don't need any of you. _

****

Need is a weakness, and one that we cannot afford now.

****

The light is fading, and this ugly, unsightly world is not better in the half-light. The fire flickers sullenly in the cold, someone needs to stay awake to watch it, to watch for predators, to keep us alive until morning when we make for the higher ground.

****

We are now weaker, more vulnerable than we have ever been, since this whole dreary rebellion began, so long ago that only Vila remembers. There's no shelter here on Terminal, and nothing to protect us but our few weapons and the wreckage of the bunker, too dangerous to enter again even to escape the dangers - and the cold - out here.

****

Someone must stay awake through the night, and _they_ cannot. So it is some form of luck, is it not? - that I don't need sleep, and I don't want it.

****

They are all are asleep now, good.

****

Tarrant, as stupidly noble as ever, suggested that a nightwatch be set... before he collapsed again, naturally. What brains he has were rattled from Servalan's bombs, he could barely keep his eyes open.

****

Vila didn't offer, he knows it would be ignored. He could never keep awake when on watch on the Liberator, and there he had Zen and Orac to take over. Though perhaps the threat of the links - his 'hairy aliens' made real - would be enough to keep him alert.

****

Or not.

****

It doesn't matter, he needs to sleep, and forget for a while what is lost. Which is just about everything except life... and the four of us. I can only hope he thinks it... and us... worth it. In the light of day, I might too, at least about life.

****

_I don't need any of you._

****

Dayna, of course, she may wake later... she'll ask me to rest, knowing I'll refuse, thinking that I need sleep, and I need them and their help to face what has happened, what I... what I had a hand in. She's wrong.

****

I learned a long time ago that I do not need anybody at all.

****

Not these three, the pathetic remains of a rebellion none of them looked for or were much use to.

****

Not Anna... who is dead, body thrown in a mass rebels' grave back on Earth so long ago. If she ever really lived at all, of course.

****

Not Cally, who lies twenty feet below us, in a grave of Servalan's making. And mine.

****

Not Blake, who is... gone. For good or evil, for ever this time.

****

_I don't need any of you. _

****

I need _things_, not people. A ship, a bolthole, the means to repair Orac... Money. Security. The three of them sleeping around a crude fire will not be much help obtaining those things, but will be better than nothing - or no one. And - despite what they think about what happened here, and how much of it I am to be blamed for - they believe that they still need me.

****

Unlike Blake and Cally, I _knew_ that being needed is as much a weakness as needing others. It was thinking Blake needed me, wanting him to need me - brought us here, and that will never happen again.

****

I don't want to need any of them... and I don't want any of _them_ to need _me_.

****

The fire sputters, dies back, needs more fuel. Out there in the shadows, and among the stars above us, predators wait.

****

Weakness or not... we need each other. For now.

**

  
**\- the end -**   


**


End file.
